seen on end; a fifth, a crab; a sixth, a dumb-bell--many of them
scroll or scrolls of some thin texture seen edgewise; and so on. It is
even a suggestion of the author's, that some of the spiral and armed
wheels may be revolving yet in the vast ocean of space in which they
are engulfed. Thus has the telescope traced the 'binding' influences
of the Pleiades, loosened the bands of 'Orion'--erst the chief
_nebulous_ hazy wonders, once and for all revealing its separate
stars: and thus, in brief, has this wondrous instrument 'unrolled the
heavens as a scroll.' Yet even these astonishing results are as
nothing to the fact, that those fantastic shapes which it has revealed
in the depths of this _lambo_ of creation, are not shapes merely of
the present time--that thousands of years have passed since the light
that shewed them left the starry firmaments only now revealed--that
the telescope, in short, in reflecting these astonishing shapes,
deliver to the eye of mind turned inward on the long-stored records of
a universal and eternal memory of the past, than to a mere eye of
sense looking outward on the things of passing time!--_The Builder_.




SOUTH-AFRICAN REPTILES.


I was going quietly to bed one evening, wearied by a long day's
hunting, when, close to my feet, and by my bedside, some glittering
substance caught my eye. I stooped to pick it up; but, ere my hand had
quite reached it, the truth flashed across me--it was a snake! Had I
followed my first natural impulse, I should have sprung away, but not
being able clearly to see in what position the reptile was lying, or